Shear Strength of Reinforced Concrete Beams under Distributed Loading

Abstract

This work confirms results indicated by previous research that uniformly distributed loading leads to higher reinforced concrete (RC) beam shear capacitycompared to 1 or 2 point loading. Different design methods are compared in this investigation, including those by ACI (1) and other Codes. Twelve beams, without stirrups, are tested in this work to farther investigate the influence of distributed loading. Two design equations are proposed in this work, one includes the size effect and the other without it. The former has proved to be the more accurate. Of 200 test results obtained from the literature, the proposed design equations lead to a COV value of Vtest /VDES of 16.8% and 17.1%. These compare favourably with other design methods.